Page 22 of Christmas Past
She shrugged. Stopped stirring. “Play it both ways,” she said. “I’m not asking what you’re going to do. I’m asking how you know what you’re going to do?”
He stopped stirring and stepped back from the pot. “I don’t know,” he said, his exasperation definitely apparent. “I trust my instincts, like any other good cop.”
It was a no brainer.
He didn’t know what she wanted from him. What she was really asking.
And didn’t like that he cared. Didn’t like that he wanted to get it right. For her.
“Exactly,” she said, and gave him the longest look he thought he’d ever withstood. It was painful. And yet…more. “You trust your instincts.”
He nodded. Sure. If that was all she’d been after, he’d gotten off light. Was glad.
“And how do you prove instinct, Chad? You can’t see it. You can’t put it in a test tube. Measure it. Touch it. Hear it.”
He stared at her. Without a comeback.
Without really even understanding what had just happened.
But he knew that in that second, his entire life had changed.
~*~
Bella knew the little girl was still alive.
The almost constant companion of pain in her foot was her proof. She wasn’t sure Chad believed though. He seemed to be losing hope.
And so she pushed him. Without boundary.
“You going home for Christmas, Sheriff?” she asked him as they poured liquid soap into brand new dispenser jars. Sealing and packing would be next.
“Christmas Town is my home now.”
But he lived alone. She’d gotten that much out of him the day before.
“Your folks coming to visit?” He’d never told her what, specifically they did, but she assumed they had to be close to retirement by then. Chad was in his thirties. And they’d been in theirs when they had him.
“No.”
“You don’t get together at Christmas?”
She had to figure him out. Had to know why this guy who oozed warmth under the surface was so closed off emotionally.
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“No.”
“Since when?”
He didn’t answer. His chin was taut, like he was gritting his teeth.
“Since when, Chad?” she asked. Not challenging him. She asked with the understanding that something was hurting him. Badly.
“Since they were killed when I was in college,” he said, biting the words, and yet delivering them with a smoothness she might have admired if she’d been able to assess unemotionally.
“Killed?”
